Animal Nature

Chapter 17

 "Look at this."

A newspaper was slapped down on top of the pages Shy had printed off the computer this morning. The headline screamed up at her: COWS KILLED BY WOLF. The story was accompanied by a dramatic photograph of two cow carcasses, the rib bones splayed against the forest trees in the background.

Her stomach twisting, she looked up at Mara, bracing herself. "What is this?"

"We have to do a rally right away," Mara said. "The farmers are ready to go out hunting for this wolf. We have to do something!"

"Can they prove a wolf did this?" Shy gestured to the photograph. "It's a little extreme even for a pack of wolves. Maybe a bear." Or maybe a werewolf, she thought.

"It doesn't matter. Some wild animal did it, and they assume it's a wolf."

"Do they even know about this wolf you saw?"

"It doesn't matter! We have to do something, now!"

Shy looked at her lunch and pushed it away. David was absent, and this news paired with his weird phone call from the night before had given Shy some awful ideas about where he was. "So what can we do?"

Mara flopped into the chair beside Shy at the empty table. "We have to do the rally. We can make signs tonight, and tell everyone to meet at the town hall, call the news crews. Can you come over my house tonight? I'll get some poster board and stuff."

"Tonight's not a great night. I have to work at the shelter, and I have a math test tomorrow to study for—"

"Shy, you're the president of the Animal Rights Club. This is our chance to actually do something! If the president of the Animals Rights Club can't find time to protect an endangered species, what is the point?"

Shy bit her lip, then said, "Wolves are not an endangered species."

"Fine." Mara jerked the newspaper away and shoved it in her backpack. She snatched up her lunch tray. "That's fine, Shy. I'll do something about it, all by myself."

Shy watched Mara march off, and found herself eating lunch alone again.

She sighed and flipped past the printout of a scholarly article called "The delusion of lycanthropic transformation," then stopped. The next heading read, "A Simple Potion for Curing Lycanthropy."

* * *

Her stomach protested as she changed into her gym clothes. "It should be illegal to have gym right after lunch," she said to Julie O'Connell, one of the few girls in her class who would talk to her. It was only because Julie was a lesbian, and in the locker room suddenly everyone worried that Julie was watching them change. Julie nodded disinterestedly to Shy's comment. Shy yanked her T-shirt over her head and made sure the books on werewolves were concealed by her backpack before heading out of the locker room.

Her stomach protested again as she entered the echoey expanse of the gymnasium—this time not because of eating too quickly. Mr. Wheaton, the gym teacher, was busy tossing red, blue, and yellow playground balls around. This, and the rain outside, could only mean one thing: dodgeball.

Did anyone really like dodgeball? Shy wondered, joining her classmates in a line against the whitewashed concrete wall. She supposed there were some who did. Jocks like Bart Garrison and mean assholes like Ron Black, big muscular guys who hated everyone and played football only so they could smash up other people without consequence. Guys who would love to sling a ball at the head of someone like Shyanne.

And of course, both Bart and Ron ended up on the opposite team as Shyanne. Which meant they slung balls at Shyanne's head the second Mr. Wheaton blew his whistle.

Shyanne got comfortable in "jail," knowing most of the gym period would be over before someone hit Bart or Ron with the ball. And Shyanne could wait for both of them to get out, because their balls had hit her at the same time. She could feel a bruise starting on her cheek where her glasses had been slammed into her face. Assholes, she thought.

Bart and Ron, however, won the first game in just over ten minutes, so Shyanne trudged back out onto the firing range. This time their strategy was different: they went for the better players on Shyanne's team first, who Shyanne tried to hide behind. All too quickly Shy's team disappeared, and she looked around before realizing she was the only player on her team left standing.

"Aw, look who's left," Bart said, throwing a ball up into the air and catching it as he walked up to the middle line. "A little doggy named Shy."

Ron chimed in with, "Arf, arf."

"You wanna get her?"

"Sure."

Shy began backing up.

Ron's ball zoomed at Shy faster than she could imagine a playground ball traveling. When the ball made impact with Shy's chest, she struggled against her non-athleticism to catch it and hold it.

"Dude, she just got you out," Bart laughed.

Ron's eyes narrowed, and he glared at Shy on his way to the jail behind Shy. "You're going down, bitch," he muttered as he walked past. Mr. Wheaton, on the sidelines, didn't hear him. Shy wiped the sweat off her nose and pushed up her glasses.

Elsewhere on the dodgeball field, players from Shy's team swarmed out of jail. But Shy felt like there was some kind of showdown brewing, between her and Bart. He saw only her.

"Hey, the view from back here's not so bad," Ron said. "Little bitch has a nice body, if you didn't have to look at her doggy face."

"Woof, woof," Bart said, and launched a ball that hit her square in the face. She staggered back a few steps. The ball she'd been clutching to her chest bounced away.

She was going to have more than one bruise on her face from this goddamned game. She started walking over to jail, hoping this break would be longer than the last.

"Why do you let them treat you like that?" Julie O'Connell said to Shy back in the locker room. Shy was hurrying through the change of clothes, eager to get out of the vicinity of gym class.

"Let who treat me like what?" Shy asked.

"Ron and Bart. They were talking shit all class."

"Oh." Her cheeks burned. She hadn't thought anyone else heard. At least, no one had stuck up for her.

"You can't let guys do stuff like that. Stand up for yourself."

Shy looked at Julie. Julie played soccer and basketball, and had well-defined abs and biceps. "What am I supposed to do?" Shy asked. She flexed her arm muscles—her non-existent arm muscles.

Julie gave her a long, steady look. Shy suddenly remembered after Julie first came out, the names they had called her, but she couldn't quite remember when they'd stopped. All through high school it had felt like Ron and Bart and their friends had targeted Shy.

"You're so mousy, Shy. If that'd been me, I would've called him a few choice names. You didn't even tell Mr. Wheaton."

Hunching her shoulders, Shy finished pulling on her shirt and gathered up her books. The word "mousy" echoed in her ears. That was exactly how Shy felt right now, scurrying out of the locker room.